Training Tip of the Week

Staying Motivated

Motivation is something which fluctuates with everyone, from elite athletes, to people new to exercise. The truth is motivation, or a lack of it, is often used as a convenient excuse to justify to ourselves why our training, fitness or health has declined.

What separates successful long term exercisers, who achieve the results they want from their training, and people who come into and out of exercise is not motivation. Its consistency.

Feelings of not wanting to exercise at times is normal, and should be expected sometimes. Many different factors can effect our enthusiasm for training, from stress to tiredness to holidays. Everybody has times when they don’t feel like training. However what successful long term exercisers learn is to be consistent. Even though they may not feel like training on a particular day, or week, or month, they train anyway. Generally you’ll feel better for having trained, and be happy with yourself that you did your workout even though you didn’t feel like it.

Staying consistent when you don’t feel ‘motivated’ is the key! When sessions are missed, fitness and momentum drops off, and the likeliness of exercise dropout can increase by the day.

The best strategies for exercise consistency are;

- Do exercise which you enjoy doing, be it a sport which you love or gym class you enjoy. If you enjoy it you are a lot more likely to do it consistently.

- Exercise with a training partner or groups who share similar goals to yourself.

- Make sure your training as got direction. One of the most ‘demotivating’ factors is aimless training which does not achieve the goals you desire from exercise. If you don’t know what training you need to do to achieve your goals, do some research, or better still save yourself a lot of time and effort and organise some sessions with a Personal Trainer.

- Mix up your training as much as possible! Many people do the same workouts week in week out and fast become bored. Also the body quickly adapts to doing the same training, then plateau’s and stops responding. If your fitness or results are going nowhere it can be very demotivating!

Aim to be consistent, instead of aspiring to unrealistic ideals of never ending ‘motivation’, and you may well develop a new outlook to your training, and probably better results!